'Twas Ever Thus

"[It was] an error to present that particular version of the play. Furthermore, the appropriate context was not provided to students to prepare them."
"[The school and its principal, Judith Carlisle], have parted ways [resulting from] an inability to align on a strategy for moving forward for the future."
Bishop Strachan School, Toronto

"I am committed to helping young women grow into reflective and informed members of society. As an educator, I believe that it has never been more important for us as to equip our daughters to deal with uncomfortable social issues and learn how to participate effectively in the often contentious debates that surround them."
"If our shared goal is to nurture a generation of strong, independent female leaders, we must stick to these core principles even in the face of occasional controversy."
Judith Carlisle, former principal, Bishop Strachan School, Toronto

The Bishop Strachan School in Toronto. The Bishop Strachan School

"[The theatre company] materially exaggerated the anti-Semitic sentiment of the original version of the play [William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice] and sadly introduced the Holocaust in a humorous light that minimized its impact and offended many of the Jewish students whose families were personally affected."
Parental group letter

"It's a slippery play, and I think that slipperiness makes it very useful as a play to teach and to use to think about racial and religious prejudices."
"Of course, it's possible to stage a production of the play that is careless with the elements of hatred that the play portrays ... It's a tough one."
Holger Syme, professor of English, expert on Shakespeare, University of Toronto

The version of The Merchant of Venice under contention at this private girls' school in Toronto is one produced by The Box Clever Theatre Company, a British theatre company. The production was staged at schools in the United Kingdom, once as well in Jerusalem, but no word on who comprised the bulk of the audience in Jerusalem and what their takeaway was. The play is the brainchild of Iqbal Khan, a Pakistani Brit obviously known for edgy postmodern treatment of well-known plays, giving them his personal stamp of production.

It's safe to venture the thought that a British playwright and producer with a Pakistani cultural background might find it difficult to relate to the sensitivities surrounding anti-Semitism, historical and current, much less the anguish suffered by world Jewry at the annihilation of European Jews by Nazi Germany. To him and his admirers these may be trifling matters, ripe for artistic interpretation whereas to Jews that treatment is certain to be received as a direct body and psychic blow of casual contempt for the seminal disaster suffered by the global Jewish community.

A situation, in short, rife with insensitivity to the raw sensibilities of the Holocaust and very alive and viral anti-Semitism of today. At the Bishop Strachan School, grade eleven students were exposed to a seemingly clever adaptation of The Merchant with a Holocaust setting in Nazi Germany where audience participation was contrived with chants of "Burn the Jews", along with overt Nazi imagery. The play was specifically meant for the edification and entertainment of young people and for the past 20 years has been staged at schools in the U.K.

The exposure of students at Bishop Strachan School to the re-imagined play of the Immortal Bard by someone whose motivation could be questioned and who felt neither moral nor artistic obligation to take the message of hate, suspicion and human rights violations seriously, torquing the original out of context and in so doing manipulating its content toward what might be construed as malicious humour at the expense of the victims led the school administration to isolate itself both from the production and the person who brought it to stage at the school.

Former principal Judith Carlisle's attestation of concerns for the future hardiness and confidence of young girls and women ring rather hollow. Her total lack of empathy and understanding of the shock value given a play that in the best of circumstances requires sensitive handling and preparation in its presentation speaks to her inadequacy as an educator. This rendition of an honoured piece of outstanding English literature that has withstood the test of time and patience is a blatant exploitation of the brilliance of a master of human emotions, human relations and language.

She might have considered instead of a live play which she thought of as an exciting coup she had orchestrated, to simply expose her impression-vulnerable charges to the 2004 film starring Robert de Niro and Al Pacino, a tour de force of an interpretation of the original script whose presentation was sympathetic and sensitive without glossing over the temper of the times and the interaction between people, exhibiting their prejudices with violent intent. An appropriate discussion to follow would have placed the events in context sufficient to elicit acknowledgement of the fallibility of human emotions and prejudices.

Sony Pictures Classics Photographer: Etienne Braun

Lacking much of that mastery, transforming the play as he did, Iqbal Khan doesn't think he has taken liberties with the play, believing his mission as director is to involve the audience to better have them understand the portrayals and their settings. His purpose in having the audience participate relates to Elizabethan theatre production: “to enlist an active response from the audience to what is shared, to invest them fully in the issues explored." This is theory without taking into account the inappropriateness of his appropriation of the play's setting, mood and character.

"The audience join in the game, but as it becomes very clear what [Martin] Luther is spouting, such as the destruction of synagogues and rabbis being forbidden to teach, they are quickly silenced. It is very important here that the narrator turns nasty and chills the room. The audience is not blamed but their innocent involvement in the game, set up by the narrator, gives them an understanding beyond statistics of the lived experience of these dynamics. This is what theatre can do beyond rhetoric." His is the rhetoric without substance.

That's his take in the handling of this sensitive topic; the introduction into a Shakespeare play of the anti-Semitic sentiments of the Medieval era, the Reformation's Lutheran split with the church and its attendant anti-Semitism, and the culmination of all eras of anti-Semitic violations of the humanity of the world's Jewish community with an event meticulously planned and brutally carried out to annihilate Jewish life. If Mr. Khan meant his version to complement Shakespeare's intent in portraying the temper of his time, it is a legitimate conclusion that he has failed in his own portrayal. 

"[The production] seeks to challenge hatred in all its manifestations and remind audiences of the dangers and consequences of unchallenged discrimination."
Michael Wicherek, Box Clever artistic director

Time for a re-assessment.